From The Fall Of The House Of Habsburg, Edward Crankshaw:
“All the admirers of Austria condiser Prince Schwarzenberg a madman”, wrote Queen Victoria to her uncle Leopold in March 1852; and “the Emperor Nicholas said that he was ‘Lord Palmerston in a white uniform’.”
Can any historical Dopers explain that reference?
Thanks.
Hmmm…perhaps she was saying he was just like Lord Palmerston?
Except in a white suit.
The heck does that mean? She was quoting Nicholas I, BTW.
This sounds to me like a General Question.
Maybe he wore a white uniform?
I think this might be the guy, but there were at least two Prince Schwarzenbergs. The elder died in 1852.
I’m pretty certain that Austrian military dress of the Napoleonic Wars was white, which would explain the uniform reference.
As to Lord Palmerston? It’s pretty well documented that Victoria didn’t like him, and some sources attribute this dislike to Palmerston’s rumored libido. Syphilis was fairly common among the politicians of the day (it is also accepted in many circles that Randolph Churchill was afflicted by the disease), and later stages of syphilis can cause dementia… Perhaps the Queen was making some assumptions.
Probably more likely was Palmerston’s unusual switch over to the opposition in 1852 in order to bring down the government of Lord Russell. Such a move may have been perceived as “crazy.”
Yes, it’s correct to assume that the Tsar’s remark had played on Victoria’s dislike of Palmerston and that his role in the fall of Russell was part of that. However, it wasn’t Palmerston’s sex life that was the issue, nor was madness the characteristic being attributed to him.
Palmerston’s third term as Foreign Secretary (1846-51) had been marked by increasingly strained relations between himself, on the one hand, and the Queen and the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, on the other. Victoria and Russell had come to feel that Palmerston was ignoring them and that he was, in effect, conducting his own foreign policy. To Victoria, who always insisted on her right to be consulted, particularly about foreign affairs, Palmerston had been getting above himself. Things had come to a head in December 1851 when Palmerston made the mistake of expressing support for Louis Napoleon’s coup in France without first consulting Russell. Russell had responded by sacking him. Palmerston had then helped organise the parliamentary defeat which had brought down Russell’s administration. Russell had resigned as Prime Minister just over two weeks before Victoria was writing her letter to the King of the Belgiums.
What Tsar Nicholas was saying was that Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, the arch-reactionary chief minister of Austria, was arrogant, domineering, egotistical and not a team-player, just like Palmerston. What Victoria, in repeating the remark, was implying that even the reactionaries thought that Schwarzenberg was overbearing.
(As a minor aside, to my knowledge, everyone accepts that Lord Randolph Churchill had syphilis.)
Is this anything like Prince Albert in a can?
[sub][sorry, I couldn’t help it][/sub]
Hey, thanks for fleshing that out for us, APB. It’s one thing to make a good guess; it’s a whole other thing to be able to put the picture in the proper frame.